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Diversification strategies for business

183:736361569 (Luke Taylor) — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 09:53:41 GMT

Time to adapt and diversify?

In the past year, businesses have had to reassess their business, revenues and profit forecast, and some have had to look at diversifying to reduce risk, increase profits and adapt to their business environment. As we move out of Lockdown and restrictions around the world, is there a need to review your diversification strategy?

Horizontal diversification

Acquiring or developing new products or services that are complementary to core business and current customer base.

For example, a soft drinks business adds a new type of snack into its product line. You may require new technology, skills or marketing approach.

Concentric diversification

Adding new products that have technological or marketing synergies with existing product lines or industries, but appeal to new customers.

For example, a mobile phone manufacturer starts producing tablets, with possibility to leverage existing technologies, equipment and marketing.

Conglomerate diversification

Adding new products or services that are entirely different from and unrelated to the core business.

For example, Coffee Brewing company opens up a range of cafes. The risks are high, as this approach requires entry into a new market, but also to sell to a new consumer base.

Vertical diversification

Expanding in a backward or forward direction along the production chain of product range, taking control of one or more stages of the supply chain.

For example, a technology manufacturer opens its own retail store.

The need to diversify maybe for many different reasons, competitiveness, to expand business revenues.=, reduce risk, provide longevity,, etc. Whatever the diversification strategy, we are sure you have taken the decision lightly and wish you every success.

Thirty years of telecom fraud & revenue assurance management

Wed, 20 May 2020 10:37:30 GMT

Could competition and consolidation turn to consortium and collaboration?

In the past 30 years, telecommunication service providers have evolved dramatically from analogue fixed line telephony to digital quad+ play mobile communication services offering innovative disruptive services. This brought competition as well as inevitably consolidation through this period. It was no different for the risk management software vendors that supported these telecommunication businesses, consolidation has continuously occurred over the last 30 years culminating with the recent Wedo Technologies and MDS Global acquisitions. In July 2019, Mobileum acquired Wedo Technologies, the leading fraud and business assurance solution provider had dominated the telecom risk management market for many years, headed up by the charismatic Rui Paiva. Wedo Technologies was not alone, not long after, another acquisition announcement, this time MDS Global purchased by Volaris Group.

But let’s start by looking way back, 30 years ago to 1990 and how things have changed and developed over time.

Some of the founding companies in telecommunication risk management software/hardware offerings started before 1990, including the likes of Roscom, Equinox, and Sigos. Thirty years later, these businesses are still going strong. Equinox founded in 1986 has worked with over 300 businesses in the past 30+ years with many of the North American carriers using or have used Equinox. Roscom with its grounding in engineering measurement has been offering test and measurement offerings to the telecommunications industry since 1982 from its base in the North of England. Sigos now offering end to end quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) as well as their traditional fraud management solutions in nearly 150 countries.

As well as the vendors and service providers, organisations started to pop up, CFCA – Communications Fraud Control Association was founded in North America in 1985, recognising a collaborative approach was required to support carriers in mitigating fraud and risk. Today it is still hosting events and seminars and providing risk management insights to the telecoms industry.

It was in the late 1990’s when large telecom organisations such as Nortel, BT, Deutsche Telecom, General Telephone & Electronics Corporation which had initially developed their own internal FMS systems to support their customers spun of their proprietary technology out. Cerebrus Solutions was spun out of Nortel in 2001 focused on fraud management. Cerebrus was eventually merged with Neural Technologies (founded in 1990) who shared common investors in 2005.

Azure was spun out of BT with its own fraud management technology in 2003 (the FMS technology can be traced back to BT in the early 1990’s). The next year it purchased what probably is regarded as one of the first cost and revenue assurance product companies – Connexn Technologies, based in the US with offices in the UK and Singapore and customers including BT, Telenor, Cable & Wireless, France Telecom, BSNL, Optus, KPN, Vodafone, Orange, O2, Qwest and AT&T.

During the decade between 1990 and 2000, fraud management was the major business requirement, fraud was a recognised revenue loss for telecommunication providers, as fixed and mobile businesses grew and expanded their businesses. North America, saw the deregulation of the telecoms industry and the former ‘Baby Bells’ found competition with an explosion of Competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs).

In the latter half of the decade, the recognised ‘big 4’ - Subex, Ectel, Neural Technologies and Compaq, battled it out for fraud management solution deployment opportunities around the world.

2001 saw the ‘dot.com bubble’ burst in spectacular style, the fantastic growth of telecom service providers and dot.com companies running of the internet, saw corporate values dramatically realigned, the days of corporate values based on subscriber acquisition suddenly focused on margins and probability.

Subex founded in 1992 purchased Alcatel’s and Lightbridge’ fraud management assets ten years later and increased their customer footprint and went onto acquire BT’s spun out fraud management technology, Azure Solutions in 2006. Subex overstretched themselves in 2007, when it acquired Syndesis in an all-cash deal worth $165 million, for which it had to leverage itself. Unfortunately, the acquisition coincided with a global stock markets collapse in the same year. It took another ten years to be debt free. Today Subex has widened its focus to IoT and security as well as incubating a separate company called CrunchMetrics focused on anomaly detection with AI and machine learning.

cVidya Networks Inc. was acquired by Amdocs in 2015 and has a long history, founded in 1990 in Israel as ECI Telesystems Ltd, it changed its name to ECtel Ltd. in 1998. In 2010, ECtel, Ltd. operated as a subsidiary of cVidya Networks Inc. In early 2016 Amdocs announced the purchase of cVidya and it has since been absorbed into this $4.0 billion turnover software and services company.

Hewlett Packard’s (HP) merger with Compaq in 2002 meant that Compaq’s fraud management system which had a widely recognised acronym of ‘CFMS’ and a substantial global footprint in particular Latin America, would eventually fall under the HP brand and continued in the telecom fraud management space for many years, only really losing impetus in the last decade.

The ten years before the beginning of this century, saw the founding of several industry forums and bodies joining CFCA, including the GSMA Fraud Forum, TM Forum and the UK Fraud Forum (TUFF). The need to work collaboratively and share ideas and insights to fight fraud was recognised.

In the early part of this century, people did not just talk about fraud, departments started to talk about revenue assurance. The ‘big 4’ became the ‘big 5’ and every Request for Quotation, Information and Proposal that involved telecom fraud management or revenue assurance now saw Wedo Technologies, Subex, Ectel, Neural Technologies and HP regularly battle it out.

Wedo Technologies founded in 2001 acquired Cape Technologies (founded in 2000) in 2007 to strengthen their RA offerings and Praesidium Services (founded in 1996) in the same year to strengthen their fraud management capabilities. As part of the Sonae Group, and the Sonaecom business group and ever-increasing customer acquisitions and a strong marketing strategy, Wedo Technologies went from strength to strength acquiring over 200 customers with a workforce of over 600 people in all continents.

During 2005 and 2010, the emerging term revenue assurance become more prominent, with every telecom service provider having a revenue assurance function in some form. Fraud and revenue assurance departments slowly and steadily started to merge and consolidate responsibility, people and processes. This in parallel drove the risk management vendors to look at integrating their own fraud and RA offerings into a combined solution.

Of course, apart from the ‘big 5’ there were a number of vendors looking to compete in the same playing field with the likes of Connectiva and Xintec showing their mettle and increased their presence with wins with tier 2 and 3 service providers in Africa and Middle East.

There were also start-ups, niche players and small businesses that competed for the risk management business, some focused on specific issues such as roaming fraud, simboxing, PABX abuse, etc. Companies like Revector who joined Sigos and Roscom in offering test call generation (TCG) services, reached well over a hundred carriers at their peak to detect bypass and simbox fraud. Revector who one of the first to foray into sim box detection was joined by the likes of Sigos, Meucci, Bluegem, Araxxe and latterly in the last decade Latro and Fraudbuster.

Revector once a big fish in a small pond became a small fish in a big pond. Today with CLI Spoofing and security/proximity solutions, Revector has diversified their product portfolio and customers to include government agencies and regulators. Latro are looking at revenue assurance and IoT and broadening their offerings. Sigos are hard at work on building a M-IoT testing network across the globe. Blugem have focused on quality of service. Sigos acquired Meucci in 2014 to consolidate the market. Recent start-up CallTic, founded in 2017 by ex Meucci founder, successfully achieved a €1.5 million series A funding in 2020

We also saw some changes in the industry forums with Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) being founded in London by Cartesian. The GSMA Fraud Forum after twenty years supporting the industry merged with the GSMA Security Group to become the GSMA Fraud and Security Group (FASG). Today the RAG has extended its reach from purely a UK based organisation with events hosted around the world, focusing on both fraud and revenue assurance.

Today, in 2020 we are left with only Subex and Neural Technologies from the original ‘big 5’ companies. Subex as previously mentioned has had its issues, with atmospheric expansion and a number of risky acquisitions that stretched themselves a little too far financially, today Subex with its large customer base has started to focus on risk management in the IoT and Smart City arena. Subex Secure IoT security solution leverages a honeypot network that combines physical devices and device emulations to generate IoT / ICS signatures. The honeypot, a computer security mechanism set to detect, deflect, or, in some manner, counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems.

Neural Technologies who have predominantly grown organically with a couple of acquisitions of distressed assets, but have never really competed with the revenues and customer base of Subex or Wedo Technologies and today are focusing their intentions on data integration more than risk management. A very late adopter of revenue assurance capabilities, their customer base is predominantly fraud management installations.

Today we see the move to a solely IP based infrastructure, the CSP becoming the utility provider with the likes of Over The Top providers (OTT) like Netflix, Facebook, etc. reaping the rewards on top of their considerable investments. Whilst the CSPs consolidate and combine fixed, cable, mobile, TV with the likes of AT&T and DirectTV and the recent Virgin Media(Liberty Group)/02 (Telefonica) mergers.

5G deployments are becoming more and more prevalent around the world, Internet of Things (IoT) after a false start has grown steadily, virtual sims/eSIMs, connectivity will flourish as 5G networks steadily launch. 5G infrastructures will be different from the more traditional past generations of telecommunications. Voice will be over IP and a by-product; data will be king and the revenue generator.

Who will be responsible for fraud in this new paradigm?
Will Fraud and Security become more cohesive within businesses?
What will the revenue assurance issues be?
Will security capability become a necessity with all fraud and assurance providers?
Will Fraud and Revenue Assurance be absorbed into Business Assurance?
Will there be further consolidation in the industry?
Will new vendors appear, will legacy vendors disappear?

We are seeing different companies attending, sponsoring risk management industry forums, like Teoco, Neustar, Mavenir, Tomia, Threatmetrix who have expanded their offerings through acquisition and innovation.

Niche players, new and old such as Symmetry Solutions, GBSD and start-ups like Orillion are finding customers who looking for quick and efficient deployments to show tangible benefits and value. Are the days of large ‘do it all’ solutions that can do everything except make the tea, but cannot be deployed quick enough to meet the fast-paced changes in the telecoms industry?

Will collaboration, consortium be a common theme to ensure vendors can provide a comprehensive offering to meet the needs of the telecommunications service providers tomorrow and in the future?

Thirty years have flown by, there have been significant changes within the industry, dramatic changes in technologies and bigger expectations from the end user.

What will occur in the next year, 5 years, decade, thirty years..?

Please note: the following has been collated from memory and of course some 'Google' searching. The size of the circles does not represent accurately the size of the businesses. Not every fraud management vendor or revenue assurance vendor maybe shown on the diagrams, these are memories and experiences of the author and no vendor has intentionally been overlooked.

Lateral Alliances offer professional and dependable consulting for all aspects of your company. From initiating and supporting marketing strategies, including PR, web design, graphic design, social media, business development, sale, right through to business and exit strategies, we have the skills and experience to support your business. We are a 'hands on' organisation, who prefer to get deeply involved in your business and challenges, not hide behind aimless discussions.

Insightful business thinking...

What is the new normal?

Tue, 12 May 2020 13:06:03 GMT

What lays ahead on the road for businesses...

In just few months, our lives have changed dramatically. The Hollywood disaster movie has come straight into our households and offices. It is on our doorstep, on our TV’s, across social media, in our faces 24/7. This pandemic has hit the world with devastating effect, excluding the sad and stark amount of deaths it has caused globally, stock markets have crashed, international borders have been closed, travel has been suppressed, offices have shut. Self-isolation is the new normal and working from the confines of your home is now entrenched in our mindset and habits.

But what does this pandemic mean for us in the coming months and years... What does it mean for us as a society? What does this mean for the economy? Lives are being lost, medical and health systems pushed to breaking. Businesses are closed, smaller enterprises have forced to shut their doors. Fiscal injection from governments through grants, loans, and other employee funding initiatives including furlough has changed employers' and employees' outlook for 2020. The implications of how we live, socialise, relax, work, and compete in the global economy in the future may well be changed forever. Small businesses looking to survive are trying to initiate novel ideas to maintain revenues and retain employees. Corporations whose share price has fallen to the lowest depths in decades are forecasting dramatic downturns in revenues and profits. The unprecedented expenditure by governments to manage the pandemic and support individuals and businesses through this disaster will have to be recouped somehow.

So how do we come out on the other side? It is impossible to have a clear understanding if or when that will be and how many reoccurrences or the length or severity of the current restrictions will be in place. This will be an astronomic effort by all of us, individually, as a nation and as a global entity. This will take unprecedented collaboration during unprecedented times. Although we are now in the 6 months of this pandemic, this saga has only just begun and what we do in the coming weeks and months will define the future global society and economy we will live and work in.

Business plans meticulously put together late last year now need to be realigned to the environment that was probably not even thought about. The risk from a Pandemic will now be a strong and visible factor moving forward, high on the SWOT analysis Threats section.

Innovation, usually aligned to technology advances will have to spread to business functions, how we sell, communicate, build relationships and manage our businesses in the future. Innovative thinking will need to take a part in all aspects of the business from where and how we work on a day to day basis in the future, do all businesses need to have the overheads of office space, when they are trying to recoup or recover from the past few months of revenue losses? Will full-time employees evolve to external consultants and self-employed adhoc resources expanding the previously expanding Gig economy. Will deglobalisation occur across global businesses, or will businesses revert to selling and supporting nationally instead of internationally.

As well as possibly diminishing business, the pandemic may also open or accelerate new innovations that have been widely talked about but not fully implemented. Do automation and RPA take a significant role in certain job functions? Will AI come to the fore, will drone services expand, will autonomous vehicles become the norm? What is very clear, we all need to adapt our businesses, this may need a step backwards or step sideways, it may mean a completely different business model. What I am confident on, is those entrepreneurial and innovative thinkers will already have or be in the throes of reassessing their business for the next months of 2020 and whatever 2021 may bring and looking to successfully guide it down the meandering road…

Are things looking bleak for the fourth industrial revolution?

Wed, 08 May 2019 21:13:33 GMT

Can we scale up with the available skillsets...

Everyone on LinkedIn has read, shared or at least seen a post that mentions Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Complex Computing, Blockchain… etc. Like it or not we are now living in a data-driven world, the fourth industrial revolution [1] where such terminology and phrases are now common-place. Data is now the new currency, the new oil, I recall reading an article last year which stated that there was 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day with the last two years alone generating 90 percent of the data in the world.

Things are afoot, disruptive technologies, digital transformation and more. Businesses that differentiate from their peers in regards competitiveness, uniqueness, satisfaction and performance rely on utilising the latest processes, techniques and technologies which also means the need for access to skilled employees and workers. So where are all these skilled, experienced and available analysts, data scientists, neural computing engineers? These advanced self-learning, intelligent techniques and technologies, even with the sleek marketing and PR spin, do require human intervention, oversight, management and design, which means skills. We are facing a skills gap.

This skills gap issue is due to the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning robotics and other emerging technologies that are being utilised in everyday business and consumerism. These advances are occurring in ever shorter cycles. The World Economic Forum predict at least 133 million new roles generated as a result of the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms that could emerge globally by 2022. That is a significant number – if it was a country it would be the tenth most populated sitting between Russia and Mexico…

The strong demand for technical skills like programming and attributes computers cannot easily master or attain such as creative thinking, problem-solving and negotiating will be in higher and higher demand.

This is a ticking time bomb, a recent study by Accenture, states the digital skills gap could cost the UK £141 billion in GDP growth over the next ten years alone.

A short-term solution to filling these skills gaps is for companies to pay a premium to acquire the talent when such specific skills are in demand. If they can find the people with the right skills and are happy to bear the investment, it of course creates an artificial bubble and will not help when in a few years’ time, when those new skills are more commonplace or possibly no longer needed…

Today, there is a massive shortage of people skilled in data science, analytics and AI. Companies won’t simply be able to fall back on hiring new employees as they attempt to future-proof their workforce. They simply do not exist. You cannot outsource for such resource; they are either lean, unqualified or non-existent.

One option is to reskill, but probably to be the most competitive and provide differentiating technologies like AI, robotics, etc. time has unfortunately passed. The World Economic Forum estimates that over 50% of all employees will require significant reskilling by 2022, but the problem is likely to be even worse in other regions.

This Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digitisation and automation of things will continue for the foreseeable future. This will impact the society and economies in a dramatic way. We cannot take lightly that robotics and AI will optimise and automate operations and remove jobs.

Education, universities and business do need to work together and collaborate on ensuring countries, companies, business and individuals can benefit from this new era without increasing economic inequality.

Times are exciting, our lives will be changing dramatically in the coming years, even months, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, but will it stall before it really gains momentum?

[1] The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies

Feel a little nervous about selling your business? You should be…

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 20:15:16 GMT

B alance sheets, reputation, uniqueness, are all factors of getting that value for your business that will let you invest in that beachfront house in the tropics. But the important thing that will be critical to successfully selling, will be the price.

Price that the purchaser and you, the seller, will accept… You may have some idea of valuation. This may be justified and substantiated through extensive research, or third-party advice, or possibly they are an aspiration, ideals and not justified and totally unrealistic…

We hear the amazing stories in the news of start-ups being valued at billions of dollars without making a cent and companies being acquired for billions of dollars. Only recently media company Disney acquired 21st Century Fox for $71.3bn, FIS' announced $43 billion acquisition of processing giant Worldpay and we heard about Larsen & Turbos’ hostile bid for software company Mindtree for $1.6bn.

Sadly, business owners should not be influenced by such tantalising business transactions, not all businesses are worth nine zeros... What kind of transaction is available to you, a Cash Purchase, a mix of Cash and Shares, a Term Loan, an Earn-Out or a Merger, all will be dependent on your business health and your potential acquirers’ hunger for your business?

The valuation of any business, be it a sole trader, small business, medium sized enterprise or a multi-national corporation is not subjective, nor is it all objective. There are some historical and traditional metrics and methodologies used to give that elusive target valuation during the preliminary discussions, workshops and deep dives into the company’s commercial, technical and financial mechanics. This maybe refined and adjusted during the due diligence, either higher or lower, depending on what comes out during this extensive business review period.

Profitability at the time of purchase will be one of these metrics. Looking at just the current year of sale/purchase, will not give a true representation of the business and the year/two years before and the projected revenue for the forthcoming year/s, will be very important in this calculation of profitability. Revenues, not Profits are the more likely metric with cash flow playing a significantly, more important role in valuing a business. Any business owner can strip out costs to make a business profitable, but it’s likely the business has no long-term commercial viability.

The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.

Warren Buffett

The type of purchaser of your business will also impact the valuation. Is it an individual, a wealthy family office, a public company, a private company, a venture capitalist, a competitor or a supplier?

Purchasers looking to come in, clean up and sell on, will lower the valuation as much as is feasible to ensure maximise margin and profitability when they move the business short term down the line.

Investors building a large portfolio may not have a full detailed understanding of your business, domain or capabilities, nor the capabilities to do so, and will likely use traditional metrics/valuations to compare your business. They will make assumptions on what a similar company in their own market definition in the past have been valued at.

A trade sale, where a synergistic company may acquire your business to strengthen its product portfolio or bolster its customer base. Your business may provide a quick and effective in-road into new geographies, industries or business verticals. Your business may increase skilled resource availability in specific domains and geographies.

Does this acquisition provide needed technology and international property (IP) to enhance the purchaser existing products and services? Is it acquiring a strong recognised brand in the marketplace? Will it remove a strong competitor? There are many more reasons where strategic acquisitions may add an additional valuation metric on top of the more traditional methodologies used.

Quantitative, Qualitative, Subjective, Objective, …

Quantitative aspects, such as historical performance, earnings multiples for similar public companies, recent sales of similar businesses, etc., contribute to the metrics and calculus.

Qualitative factors, such as management strength, protection/capability against competitors, monopoly or high/difficult barriers to entry, recurrent income, etc. contribute to the valuation.

Subjective influences, such Employee churn/turnover, customer satisfaction, robustness of customer contracts, critical partners/suppliers

Objective stimuli, including customer acquisition and retention costs, profit margins, overheads, IP, reoccurring revenues, length of customer contracts, assets, liabilities such as loans, trading currency, number of corporations/affiliations, pending court cases, patent/IP protection, compliance and regulatory risks, the list of KPI’s and check-points can be extensive.

At the end of the day, the overall market is one of the judges and a heavy influencer of a company’s worth. The only way for that potential value of a company to be recognised in a sale is through many conversations that will occur with prospective purchasers and investors. This will determine the level of interest in the business and also provide a ‘litmus paper’ indicator of feasible value expectations.

Many of the usual methodologies for valuation are listed below and maybe used in singularity or in a combination to achieve the most effective valuation:

Market Value Business Valuation - comparing your business to similar businesses that have sold. This business valuation method only works for businesses that can access sufficient market data on their competitors.

Asset-Based Business Valuation - simply considers your business’s total net asset value, minus the value of its total liabilities, according to your balance sheet. Are you are a Going Concern or a Liquidation Value

ROI-Based Business Valuation - depends on the market to determine how long will it take to recover the original investment.

Discounted Cash Flow Valuation - based on projected cashflow adjusted or discounted to its present value.

Capitalization of Earnings Valuation - calculates a business’s future profitability based on its cash flow, annual ROI, and its expected value.

Multiples of Earning Valuation - estimates a business’s maximum worth by assigning a multiplier to its current revenue. Multipliers vary according to industry, economic climate, and other factors.

Book Value Valuation determines the value of the business’s equity (assets minus liabilities) as described on the business’s balance sheet

At the end of the day a company and its likelihood to be acquired, and the valuation offer accepted by yourself, is based on if your company is still being seen through ‘rose tinted glasses’ by potential acquirers after the due diligence, prospectus review, meetings with senior management and trawl through the numbers and projections, and if they hold water.

Starting on the road for acquisition if undertaken properly, will not be a quick process. The need to get the company in shape is going to be needed. The M&A team will be the ‘personal trainers’, the people that will look to get the business in shape, working alongside senior management to optimise, shine and buff the business to give it the best representation to the market. Making sure the ‘shop window’ is properly dressed and ready for viewing could take many months. Business owners will need to swallow some pride and listen to this external advice, this advice will be to ensure that the business is maximising its potential and ultimately benefit the owner.

Valuation comes down to common sense. In the case there is a divide, chasm or gulf between valuation and price expectation from yourself, then creativity becomes involved. Deal structures such as cash and shares, earn-outs, tie-in of senior management, etc., can be introduced. All have positives and negatives in the risk of a successful business acquisition.

If you are asking for a high and unreachable price for your business it is most likely you actually do not want to sell your business at this time. You have either a misunderstanding of the company acquisition process or you believe that you can make more from the sale in a year/two years’ time. If this is the case do not put yourself through the corporate acquisition process and the acquisition due diligence process, it takes precious time away from your business operations, it diverts you from revenue generating activities, it takes resource commitment and will cost money.

Selling a business is no small feat for the owner, or the mergers and acquisition experts that will support you through such a transaction. Do not take lightly the need to be 100% committed in undertaking this. If you have any slight hesitancy, a nagging doubt, a stop before you start down the long, arduous bumpy road of acquisition.

Lateral Alliances offer professional and dependable consulting for all aspects of your company. From initiating and supporting marketing strategies, including PR, web design, graphic design, event management, social media, business development, recruitment, sale, right through to business and exit strategies, we have the skills and experience to support your business. We are a 'hands on' organisation, who prefer to get deeply involved in your business and challenges, not hide behind aimless discussions.

Insightful business thinking...

Purple People within your business may mean life or death

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

‘Jack of All Trades’ goes from derogatory to compulsory

The colour purple is formed by mixing red and blue primary colours. The colour purple has been linked to royalty, bravery and strength. Purple was worn by rulers of the Turkish Byzantine and Roman empires. In Japan the colour is traditionally associated with the emperor and the British Crown Jewels are adorned in purple velvet.

In the world of business purple is linked to ‘purple people’ who are professionals who know how to blend business acumen (blue) and technical (red) skills together. These are hybrid professionals who can understand the business, commercial aspects, recognise value, but also be able to understand low level data and technologies.

The concept of ‘purple people’ was formulated by Wayne Eckerson [1] , sometime around 2010 when he started to discuss the skills needed for successful business intelligence.

Corporations are full of ‘Red’ functions, departments or individuals – these are the BI technologists, the database administrators, the network engineers. Then of course there is the ‘blue’ function within the corporation, the business divisions, the marketing teams and the finance departments.

In most corporations, these two groups are usually working independently. This perceived unwillingness to cooperate is largely because neither understands the remit, responsibilities, challenges, issues, threats, risks, pressures, deadlines that the other group face. The other reason is that they speak two different languages; they report to different management, they have different KPI’s, they possess different career aspirations and most likely socialise separately, maybe crossing paths in the office refectory by accident.

'Purple people’ are neither red or blue. They are not a pure technologist or a specialist, nor are they pure business; they are a balanced blend of both. Anything that requires the practical use, insight and analysis of data requires ‘purple people’ to succeed.

Today, corporations are constantly facing new, transformative and difficult, technical and disruptive business challenges within extensively competitive environments. In order to succeed they need to recruit, train, educate and cultivate more ‘purple people’ .

The migration to new technologies such as robotics, automation, machine learning, cloud, the volume and diversity of data, big data and analytics to name just a few, all mean the need for the requirement of ‘purple people’ .

‘Purple people’ have the knowledge and insight to leverage new and emerging technologies and undertake analytics of data to solve business problems through traditional business skills. These skills can include collaboration and communication as well as more specific skills such as database management and statistics.

We now live in a world of data, we utilise, collect, store, share, distribute and analyse data in many of our day to day activities. The use of Business Intelligence and Big Data initiatives to monetise or provide intelligence and insight into this data is now commonplace. Corporations analyse data on their business, within their industry/domain and on their customers to provide additional insight and competitive advantage.

I was introduced to this concept of ‘purple people’ by Horia Senegal, Director of Data Governance at BT and also Bernice DiMarco, Director of Group Business Assurance, who have recognised the need for ‘purple people’ within their business responsibilities and the broader good of the business. Listening to Horia at a recent Risk & Assurance Group meeting, it is evident that Horia and his colleagues at BT are passionate about the need for ‘purple people’ . Horia and his team are working on the ‘coal face’ day to day challenges, dealing with trying to govern data, manage risk and assurance within a large multi-national telecommunications service provider.

They recognise that to succeed in the domains of Data Governance, Revenue/Business Assurance and Risk Management, they need to understand the business, how it functions and its financial and strategic objectives. They also recognise that to be able to do this they need to have full transparency and understanding of the data within the business. They need to understand and have business intelligence. This means there needs to be a coming together of departments, functions and individuals for this to occur. This is where ‘purple people’ come in.

The disciplines of Business Intelligence, Business Assurance, Data Governance requires a thorough and continuous understanding of the business issues, processes and strategies. These business units have the capability of delivering information that answers business questions, as these questions can change from hour by hour, day to day, week to week and are often influenced by the wider market landscape. These teams need to continuously adapt and evolve to succeed and provide business value. Purple people can continually reconcile, mediate, educate, negotiate, communicate between business and IT domains and build a strong lasting partnership that delivers real value.

Eric Priezkalns, CEO of the Risk & Assurance Group recently presented a similar concept at the recent Risk & Assurance event in Bahrain, where he discussed the need for ‘RiskJacks’ to ensure successful management moving forward in the telecommunications industry – a combination of an engineer, consultant, data scientist and investigator. Not going too deep into Etymology, a ‘RiskJack’ is a progression from ‘SteepleJack’ or ‘LumberJack’ and what was a somewhat derogatory phrase in the past of ‘Jack of all Trades’: a person not skilled in one specific job, but who dabbled in many.

Be it ‘ ‘Purple People’ or ‘RiskJacks’, the need to be multi-skilled and multi-domain proficient is a now a necessity in the explosive and transformational Data Economy we now reside.

[1] Wayne Eckerson: is a thought leader in the business intelligence and analytics field since the early 1990s. He has conducted many research studies and written books: The Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders and Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business. For many years, he served as director of education and research at The Data Warehousing Institute, where he oversaw the company's research and training programs and chaired its BI Executive Summit. He also served previously as an industry analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group. He is an industry analyst at TechTarget and principal consultant of Eckerson Group.

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The Chief Data Officer cometh

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The title is not new, but is 2019 when it gets its prominence and recognition

The title of Chief Data Officer is not new but for the last few years it has been an emerging executive role that has been gaining traction in some industry sectors. This year the Chief Data Officer (CDO) role has predicted to shake-off the misconception of being a lieutenant of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and reside along with the CMO, CIO and CFO in the corporate boardroom.

The number of CDO’s appointed by major organisations rose from 400 to 1,000 in 2014 stated Gartner. In 2016 Gartner predicted that 90% of large organisations will have a Chief Data Officer role by 2019. The research firm has predicted that 15% of Chief Data Officers will move on to CEO, COO, CMO or other C-level positions by 2020… This year is a critical milestone for the CDO.

Deutche Bank appointed its first Chief Data Officer in November 2010, the Financial Times had its first ever CDO - with a position on the FT executive board in September 2015, Telefónica formed the CDO position as a significant one at the telco, part of the executive committee reporting directly to the CEO in early 2016. France was the first country to appoint a Chief Data Officer only late last year.

'It's difficult to imagine the power that you're going to have when so many different sorts of data are available.' Tim Berners-Lee

It is evident we live in a world drowning in data, the importance, risk and value of data is now only being truly recognised by corporations as they strive forward in highly competitive markets. Technology and digitisation have allowed for disruptive influences to define success as well as failure.

The CDO will likely strategise, manage, oversee, educate, drive and create data value, insight and intelligence that the corporation can directly correlate to business success. The CDO will likely lead and support his army of ‘purple people [i] ’ to ensure that technical/business dynamics of the corporation are not working autonomously but collaborating as one synergistic machine. Some of these activities will be directly experienced by end customers, employees and shareholders, other activities will be behind the scenes, identifying optimal business processes, detecting revenue leakage, streamlining operations, etc.

'Data is the new gold' Clive Humby

Some views on the role of the Chief Data Officer position is that this is a temporary position and once the ‘spotlight’ on GDPR, data protection diminishes and maybe digital transformation projects are completed, so the role will become redundant… I am not so sure.

But this is more than data security, the CDO is in a critical position, sitting between IT and business, where corporate expectations will be high. They will make tough and potentially unpopular decisions within the business. They will be responsible for defining data and analytic strategies within the organisation, essential in the success of delivering digital transformation initiatives. The CDO will be influential in breaking the historic siloed infrastructure, autonomous departments and data repositories. Their core responsibilities of will include data governance and quality, and regulatory compliance and creating a data-driven corporate culture.

A search on LinkedIn for the job title ‘Chief Data Officer’ gets a healthy number of professionals with similar job titles displayed. Let us see how 2019 progresses, it will be interesting to see how many get board level seats and demonstrate a real difference this role can add to a business.

[i] Purple People was coined by Wayne Eckerson in approximately 2010. https://bit.ly/2BqKaYW

Competitive Business Strategies - Do you successfully distinguish yourself in the market?

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:14:23 GMT

To compete you need to be different...

Competing to become the lowest-cost provider in an industry or differentiating yourself from your competitors to drive business are the two fundamental options to an entrepreneur, business leader or CEO to drive a business forward.

Differentiated business strategies are usually the more preferred choice than the possible low-cost strategies available, even though businesses such as Poundland, Easyjet, IKEA and others have maximised the cost strategy. The risks from competition and smaller margins means that entering an industry with the objective to be the most cost effective needs thorough investigation and planning to understand how operational efficiencies can provide that leading edge. In the past Japanese car manufacturers have led the way in automation to demonstrate speed, cost-effectiveness and improved quality control to differentiate themselves in this space.

It is evident only one company can survive as a true low-cost provider in any one industry. Being the second, third or fourth lowest provider does not usually work as a successful business strategy.

Differentiation is ensuring your business or brand stand out by offering unique features, benefits, services. This means identifying the most important criteria used by purchasers and decision makers in your industry and then aligning your product or service in a manner that meets these criteria. It is no use replicating one of your competitors features… because they cannot be unique. This needs the approach of looking at the buyer’s mentality, issues, threats, culture, competition, weaknesses, etc. Offering highest-quality product, the best solution, an exclusive feature or tool can work if they are significantly different from your peers.

'A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.'
Henry Ford

If you are a coffee shop, a cleaning company or a software solution vendor you need to identifying something that can connect with your target audience. For example, everyone can sell coffee. But maybe offering an environment where business owners/entrepreneurs can network and work, an app to allow regular drinkers to pre-order their desired coffee mix to avoid the queue. There are lots of office cleaners, but how many will look to provide fresh cut flowers, brew the coffee and provide croissants for the first workers into the office. These are just simple examples on what could be done to differentiate oneself. All ideas to differentiate need to be assessed on the impact to the total customer base, the cost and possible third-party influences including regulations, etc.

The need to think out of the box is required, no business can succeed by being a ‘me too’. To successfully launch a business, compete in a marketplace, the need to be innovative in your marketing differentiation is critical.

Be imaginative, be creative, be alert. Differentiate.

Lateral Alliances offer professional and dependable consulting for all aspects of your company. From initiating and supporting marketing strategies, including PR, web design, graphic design, event management, social media, business development, recruitment, sale, right through to business and exit strategies, we have the skills and experience to support your business. We are a 'hands on' organisation, who prefer to get deeply involved in your business and challenges, not hide behind aimless discussions.

Insightful business thinking...

Risk Management - Proactive Promotion versus Reactive Defence

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It is the beginning of a new year, risk management professionals are coming back to work refreshed ready for new challenges ahead.

Be it fraud management, credit risk, revenue, business assurance or risk management, the need to review and justify the departments existence and value to the corporation is something that no senior manager can escape in their tenure. It probably feels like a needless and painfully laborious exercise for many of the senior managers overseeing these departments.

There will be some senior managers out there, who will not need to go through this process of justification every year. They have been consistently proactive, transparent, interactive and educated and successfully marketed themselves and the department to the senior management/board on the justification and value of a risk management department/function.

Some pessimists may see this as self-promotion, self-publicity, career promotion strategies, others will see this as clever PR and marketing, I hope many would see this as a key responsibility of a senior manager to fulfill his role and support his employees and team members to carry out his risk management responsibilities.

These proactive professionals this year will be not struggling to ‘nickel and dime’ and retain resources, they will not be sweating over spreadsheets and attempting to extract positives from the team in small rooms late into the evening.

These proactive professionals will be spending time at looking to extend the use of innovative technologies to assist them, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and even robotics to drive performance, improvements and productivity and provide value to the business.

These proactive professionals will be leading the innovation of risk management, building substantial but justified teams. They will be investing in technology, bringing in vendors and consultants to support their strategic initiatives. They will collaborate with their peers, instill an ethos of learning, sharing, motivation and education.

Which would you prefer to aspire to or work for?

I know my answer…

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people. Steve Jobs

Snow and Business

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 09:07:25 GMT

Not all of us had a white christmas this year... but maybe there will be snow in the near future...

One snowflake, however intricate, beautiful, unique and delicate will most likely melt as it touches down and lightly kisses the earth. On their own these, fragile individual flakes of nature, small, intricate, no two falling the same, will join together with other fragile snowflakes and their combined collective strength and resilience gets stronger and stronger. You have seen the stunning picture postcard snow scenery and you have seen the tremendous strength of an avalanche…

As humans, we are very similar, as individuals we all have unique characters, strengths, opinions, intelligence and fragility, if we can successfully combine and collaborate with others, we can draw strengths from others, we can bond and grow resolute, a combined force to be reckoned with.

No one person in business can succeed without the need to collaborate. No one person has the capability to be truly successful without joining forces with others.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people. Steve Jobs

When valuing a business...

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 13:36:41 GMT

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. Henry Ford

There are a number of aspects that are used to value a business...

They include growth aspects, earning history, future performance, cash flow, revenue, debt, financial leverage, assets, profits, location, reputation and much more.

But when valuing a company do not overlook the need to value the people within it, as they are the business…

they are the strategists,
the domain experts,
the people that motivate, instigate and propagate productive work,
they are the customer interface,
they are part of the history of the business,
they have the experience of the products, technology and the services offered,
they appreciate the strengths, the weaknesses, the threats, the opportunities.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people. Steve Jobs

Is Customer Loyalty relevant nowadays?

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 13:41:08 GMT

“In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.”
Doug Warner

We hear about customer loyalty, customer experience, customer engagement, customer relationship management, customer focus... But are businesses in this world of online subscription services and e-commerce really focused on customer loyalty and retaining these loyal customers?

Customer loyalty is an act of choosing a company’s product or service over their peers and competitors consistently and repeatedly. When a customer is loyal, they are not easily influenced by price for instance. They prefer quality of service and product. Customer loyalty comes with time, it requires investment, patience and interaction with the customer.

Loyalty comes from several possible areas:

Brand – consumers may select based on reputation of the brand, and be loyal to products produced by such brands,
Product – where consumers consistently purchase the same product, due to maybe the features or quality,
Service – either quality of the service delivered, or maybe through subscription based monthly reoccurring revenues,
Relationships –loyalty from an individual/relationship built that has instilled trust and respect,
Price – where loyalty is driven by paying the same or cheapest price amongst its peers,
Distribution – based on location and convenience

Be it brand loyalty, product, price, the business is relying on these aspects to ensure they can retain these customers, but do business wish to retain customers and strengthen loyalty, sometimes I have to question this assumption…

There are figures that have been banded around for many years that it costs more than five times as much to attract a new customer, than to keep an existing one… it has always been a common business edict to attract and retain customers to ensure revenue security, reputation, etc.

But I have to question this when in the space of a week, I have had to call a well-known vehicle emergency breakdown service, to ask them why my loyalty has been rewarded with an increase of over £100 from previous fees… now this is not the first time I have done this, in fact for the last 5 years I have undertaken this very same call and I get the same frankly rather lame answers.

We all know it, we sign up for a defined subscription for a service, be it streaming TV, breakdown cover, magazine subscription, vehicle insurance, house insurance, a mobile phone, etc. for a determined period of time, maybe 6, 12, 18 months etc., we provide our credit card details/direct debit information and the service is automatically renewed time after time.

At the end of the day, the company is competing in the marketplace, it offers a competitive price among its peers to attract the consumer, it may differentiate by highlighting its coverage, quality, etc. and the consumer makes that decision, in my case six years ago, when I made that decision to take the services of this emergency breakdown service, it was probably simply based on brand loyalty.

So why do companies think they can dupe the average consumer, to renew without questioning the new fees, or maybe this is the plan… do they rely on the laziness and inertia of the consumer to simply continue paying without paying much attention.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/apr/07/the-aa-fees-prices-introductory-offer

Is this the new marketing initiative that overwrites previous rules and assumptions on loyalty?

Of course, the AA, are not the only business undertaking such ploys and I only highlight these due to my own experiences. Today anyone in the UK, can change their bank, utility provider and phone provider in a press of a computer key, there are several price comparison sites, where the customer can identify best deal. The consumer has become fickle, and maybe also a little lazy, maybe this gives the right for businesses to try and make as much as they can in any way, they can…

“Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. But when anyone tries to run a business solely for profit… then the business must die as well, for it no longer has a reason for existence.”

Henry Ford

While it’s obvious that customers who come back and reopen their wallets and purses is good for business, there are more subtle benefits… They recommend to others, they are likely to purchase other offerings the company may offer, they substantiate the company revenues, cash-flow and profits with regularly and repeat business, increasing shareholder value. And there is of course less overhead on that call centre with disgruntled customers calling about their latest subscription renewals…

So, is loyalty a good thing anymore? Maybe loyalty these days is only left in one of those inordinate number of plastic cards stuffed in your wallet, where you get your free ‘n’th coffee free, or discounted cinema tickets with your insurance broker, or your discounted restaurant meals with your phone provider, or your ‘n’% off your next grocery shop…

Has Brand, Product, Service, Relationships Loyalty been lost and only Price (cheapest) and Distribution Loyalty (closest and quickest) really mean anything in this fickle faceless online world we now reside?

Competition or Monopoly?

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:03:27 GMT

Monopoly is bad for business.

Henry Ford

I am sure if I asked you this question as a business owner you will say Monopoly…

If I asked the same question as a customer/consumer I am sure you would say Healthy Competition…

So, is one better than the other, or do they both have equal advantages and disadvantages?

I have had discussions with business owners, directors, investors and senior managers where a monopoly was their aspiration and here, I try and explain briefly as possible why it is not ideal for either business or consumer to be in a monopolistic situation.

Firstly, what is a Monopoly? It is the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. Competition can be interpreted as the activity or condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others.

There have been some famous or maybe infamous monopolies in the past, luckily with the introduction legislation and regulation, monopolies are not such a common occurrence. The days of the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, American Tobacco, AT&T, etc. have all but gone. But there are names you will have heard of… Unilever, Monsanto, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle and even Netflix that have near monopolies in some, if not all of their business offerings.

For any business owner or business, the natural desire is to be superior amongst your peers is a fundamental requirement to achieve success but that does not mean you have to aspire to have a monopoly. The monopolistic corporation can control cost, quality, service and value with complete disregard to its customers if it wishes to do so. A monopoly means the customer only has one choice, take it or leave it, whatever the quality, value or price.

To ensure the best quality of material, offering or service… you need competition… healthy competition. Without healthy competition, businesses can inadvertently sit back on their laurels with a hint of arrogance and slowly fall into complacency and laziness.

We only need to look at the likes of IBM, Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia in recent times where corporations have taken their eye of the ball and fallen into complacency and ultimately overlooked critical changes in the industry, competition, innovation and their customers’ needs and unfortunately seen their business change or in the worst case diminish dramatically.

First to market/start-ups/industry disruptors, being first to offer and launch a technology, service or product may provide that initial unique superiority and advantage that can build that brand, but other corporations will follow into this new space if they believe there is a market, which means that competition will naturally ensure focus on the end customer to maximise corporate revenues and maybe pay back of those investors.

More established, let’s say older corporations have probably attempted many different strategies to differentiate themselves from their competition, from aspects such as quality, quantity, timeliness, locality, availability, delivery, manual, automation, online, etc. and of course the obvious maybe more simplistic one, price.

Some corporations look to grow organically using innovative marketing and sales techniques to increase their customers and revenues, others look to acquire similar or complementary business to increase customers and revenues.

Some take the steady and consistent approach, focusing on quality, best of breed, innovation to maintain their superiority. All have the different approaches have differing levels of risk, exposure effort, investment, timeliness and financial return.

Some businesses use the highly risk ‘scorched earth’ or the ‘burnt field’ approach by lowering their prices, to make it near impossible for competition to follow in their path for long without suffering seriously from the slim or non-existent profits. Such strategies usually require some heavy investors to allow corporations to weather such initiatives.

If you cannot compete and differentiate yourself successfully from your peers, then there is always the possibility of introducing the cartel… where manufactures and corporations with the ulterior motive of keeping prices high/controlled, look to manipulate availability, distribution and keep new comers from competing or entering the market.

This behaviour does not assist the consumer having similar impact of the monopoly where the consumer is disadvantaged and the companies have no emphasis to focus on the consumer but to only maintain the status quo.

The oil industry, diamond trade and even olive oil have all been, and in some cases still are linked to cartels where the supply/availability and price of crude oil, diamonds and olive oil has been overseen and managed and controlled to the advantage of the cartel.

That is why I believe having healthy competition is a good thing, no corporation should be afraid of competition. Competition keeps every business on their toes, it creates a healthy competitive environment within the industry and within the business itself, it can instil pride, it motivates the desire to achieve quality, drive performance, encourage innovation and ensure the customer is the focus of the corporations’ strategy.

Healthy competition permeates all the way through the business and the industry it resides, from the employees themselves and how they work and reflected all the way through to the company’s persona, standards, marketing, sales approach external messaging and how they interface and communicate with their customers with competition you are forced to compete for the same customers, therefore improving customer service will surely assist you to attract loyal patrons.

Within a competitive environment, complacency is not feasible, if the business is continually looking to better itself, trying to innovate to differentiate, employees will be encouraged to also push themselves further ensuring a collaborative, unified business.

Competition forces you to focus, be astute, question, investigate. You need to understand the demographic, the region, the market environment, the possible market challengers, you need to understand your competitors, aspects that may improve your business, what has worked or failed in the past. Competition nurtures intelligence on how to market, how to optimise, deliver, communicate, retain customers and differentiate yourself from your peers.

That is why I believe having healthy competition is a good thing, no corporation should be afraid of competition. it keeps every business on their toes, it creates a healthy competitive environment within the industry and within the business itself, it can instill pride, it motivates the desire to achieve quality, drive performance, encourage innovation and ensure the customer is the focus of the corporations’ strategy.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

Henry Ford

'My word is my bond'

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 11:42:18 GMT

Retaining business morals and standards to ensure ethical and mutually trusting business relationships

‘My word is my bond’ has for centuries been the motto of the London Stock Exchange, Since 1801 the motto Dictum Meum Pactum , My Word is My Bond has been used, where bargains and deals are made with no exchange of documents and no written pledges being given.

This saying goes back at least to 1500, when a Scottish source has ""O kingis word shuld be o kingis bonde" (A Kings word should be a Kings bond)

There has been various interpretations and adaptations since then. Ultimately throughout time, two parties verbally agree terms, they shake hands and the business transaction or agreement is seen as cemented and set in stone.

We have seen the numerous marketing photos displayed on company websites and literature of handshakes, this action representing business, agreement, partnership, professionalism, integrity, trust, respect.

So why has something so instilled in the business psyche, now seem to be a worthless, empty gesture? Today unscrupulous supposedly business people can dismiss such gestures as worthless, they can go through the actions, promise everything and commit to nothing.

So why has honesty, decorum and manners been lost? Business people wishing to be respected and trusted should still play by the rules that have been in place for centuries.

"I have always been an honest trader. I come from a school of traders where there was honour in the deal. No contracts, just a handshake and that's it, done. That's the way I prefer to do business but it's not always possible these days, sadly."

Alan Sugar, Entrepreneur

It is a sad that I have to say I have experienced more and more situations where what is said, discussed, greed and hands shaken is dismissed as irrelevant and only what is agreed on paper really stands. We need to bring back proper corporate morals, higher business standards and significantly increased personal responsibility.

Every business and business owner, entrepreneur, investor, board director, senior manager, employee should instill the below 10 codes of ethics within their business, these fundamental aspects will be relevant in business and in their personal life.

1. HONESTY

2. INTEGRITY

3. TRUSTWORTHINESS

4. LOYALTY

5. FAIRNESS

6. RESPECT FOR OTHERS

7. COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE

8. LEADERSHIP

9. REPUTATION

10. ACCOUNTABILITY

They should be monitored by all within the business and self-govern themselves, not afraid to query and highlight wrong practices.

We need to look to focus on the fundamentals of business and commerce, the honest, the loyal, the sincere. Have they been scrupulous in their business transactions?, have they instilled trust and respect?, have they played by the rules set down for hundreds of years and followed ‘My word is my bond’? Individuals who think they can ride roughshod over employees, associates, partners, customers and prospects with false sincerity do not deserve to hold any significant office in business.

"The motto of the old order in the City of London was, 'My word is my bond,' but the financial crisis revealed a culture quite alien to that heritage. The stewards of people's money were revealed to have been speculators with it."

Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister

These simple basic morale standards and business etiquette have been ingrained in trade and commerce for hundreds of years. Let them not fade, let us maintain them as we move into a different era of business and digitalisation where communication and interaction with our peers will change and adapt. Let us ensure we retain the handshake, a commitment, a promise…

My word is my bond, Dictum Meum Pactum

Big or small, established or start-up - businesses have the same challenges

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 10:48:25 GMT

He who chases two rabbits, catches none.

Confucius

Small businesses are usually a little unstructured but agile, responsive and customer centric. Large businesses are generally more structured but can be stifled with hierarchy, process and miscommunication. Smaller businesses have the stress of hand to mouth cash flow, larger corporations have the possible luxury of external investment.

These traits have both a positive and negative impact when it comes to managing a business, generating revenue, building or selling products, maintaining customer relationships and managing cash flow, etc.

In small business everyone is an individual working in a small group for the same common goals. Visibility of professionalism, productivity and performance are easier to see and manage. In a larger corporation, employees lose their individuality in the broader functioning of the business. Optimising the business for ultimate financial and operational performance are more difficult to undertake and maintain.

. . when you’re in a small boat, you can see who’s paddling hard and who’s looking around.

Ev Williams, Twitter

Whatever size of the corporation, business success is measured in revenue and profits, but there are other aspects including employee engagement and customer satisfaction that make businesses successful.

People may aspire to build commercial empires, but it is no straightforward task. Achieving a balanced approach to business is never easy but is critical to achieve success. All corporations have great aspirations but sometimes day to day business just gets in the way…

‘Not enough resources’ is a common issue that is raised across all sizes of business. The more successful the business, the more revenue, the more customers, the more work, but with this success do you have enough employees to satisfy your customers and orders?

Planning is one way to manage resource issues and bottlenecks. Thorough planning across the entire business, from Marketing, Sales, Presales, Development/Production, Delivery/Deployment, Support/Customer Service, etc. provides a detailed understanding of the business and allows orders to be turned to cash. Sales need to provide substantiated sales forecasts and accurate detail on the timing of such wins. Presales need to provide detailed information about the possible scope/effort/product requirements to ensure that Development/Production can build the solutions in budget and a timely manner, which can be passed to Delivery/Deployment to deploy with minimal effort, etc., etc.

The need to plan ahead is important when it comes to expanding teams and footprint - recruiting takes time, advertising for roles, assessment and Interviewing process, notice periods of successful candidates, then training these new individuals and getting them up to speed to be productive and contribute to the business.

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Jack Welch, GE

Proactivity. A proactive approach comes with effective planning. Businesses who correctly forecast growth can resource, implement systems, processes, expansion, channels, partners, etc. to support this growth. If you have to react to un-forecasted business growth this could seriously damage the business’s health and survival, expending time and resource to react and support this growth and distracting attention to other important areas of business.

Visibility. Having visibility across the business and the different facets of business operations will provide insight into the critical points in a business where potential bottlenecks could impact performance, customer satisfaction and cash flow. It allows business understand potential pending issues an opportunity. Oversight of a business provides that crucial intelligence of the day to day activities and performance. Visibility requires constant communication from the different locations, departments or business units to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to business decisions.

“Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is reality

Cash flow Management

With all business – cash-flow is critical and the need to be innovative in regards getting paid is always crucial, be it distributing payments in a service, rental, subscription models to avoiding the peaks and troughs of more traditional capital sales. Reviewing different payment options including deposits, staged, tiered payments, etc. Ensuring you have contacts in the respective customers financial departments to push through invoices and payment and reduce delays in payment and mitigate potential bad debt.

Focus on your core strengths – ‘Stick to the knitting’ Until you have a near monopoly on your business, then do not look at removing resource and diversifying. Do not take your eye of the ball and ensure your core business is secured and generating revenues. Diversifying can be funded from profits, external funding, etc. Diluting the core business by distracting the resources and business could have dire consequences.

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Sir Richard Branson

Team. The above quote can be misinterpreted, but the fundamental message is, if you have good happy, satisfied and motivated employees they will naturally look after your customers. It makes sense. If you have happy, contented and motivated employees, they will naturally adopt strategic initiatives, support management and have strong customer focused mentality. Do not disregard the importance of building trust and respect with your employees.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.

Steve Jobs, Apple

Develop a strategic plan . And stick to it, do not flip and flop, thorough collaborative thinking and strategizing should allow any business of any size to develop a plan they can look to implement and a defined path to follow. Of course, sometimes that path may have a few hurdles, these potential hurdles should be understood so you are prepared when they do occur so you can deviate from that path without going to far of the beaten track.

Build a brand. Your brand and reputation are critical to differentiate you from your competition. A brand is needed whatever you are a B2B, B2C or even C2C player. Ensure your brand reflects your industry and your business, this is how your customers will perceive you and motivates and provides direction to your employees. A clear brand strategy helps you stay focused on your mission and vision as an organization.

With brand comes reputation, act with upmost moral standards and do not disregard business ethics.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Measured Risk

Although business need to take some risks. Sometimes there will be the need to step out of the comfort zone to make some serious and critical decisions, that could have fundamental consequences to your business. Such measured risk can only be done with planning to ensure that any possible threats, roadblocks are recognised and understood as you accept such risks.

Finally, be Alert and ready to Adapt

We are now undertaking commerce and business in a fast-moving world, it is constantly changing, technology, digitalisation and disruption are now commonplace. Corporations need to understand the many alternative ways of doing business and be alert and ever aware of this evolving and adapting world.

2019 is just around the corner… what does 2019 hold for you, have you planned your objectives for next year… now is the time to ensure you go into 2019 proactively and not chasing your tail or two…

He who chases two rabbits, catches none.

Confucius

The Blame Game - The easy corporate get-out

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 21:23:11 GMT

A short lesson in humility

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.
Confucius

It is very easy for corporations to blame past employees for perceived issues or failures they now face. It is always very easy to blame someone who cannot defend, correct, substantiate or answer the allegations anymore. But such behaviour only detracts from the real underlying issue or cause that usually still needs resolution.

A blame culture ingrained at the very top of any business only breeds corporate contempt, suppressing innovation, denying responsibility and crushing collaboration. Employees will not push themselves if they believe that if anything goes wrong, they will be blamed.

Employees should not feel threatened and feel like they may have a target pinned on their back. Employees should be motivated, trusted and empowered, working in a collaborative harmonious environment, not under the oppression of being a potential target of blame.

The employer; board, executives and senior management cannot only experience the successes and rewards that come with such a position, but crucially need to share the responsibility of failure as well. True leaders will support and encourage, when mistakes occur and things go wrong, and be the first to hold their hands up and share the responsibility. This is the only way a business will succeed and ensure real cooperation throughout the entire corporate hierarchy. An emphasis on blame, breeds doubt and harvests mistrust killing any perceived loyalty and quashes innovation.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.
John Ruskin

There are many sizes of working in such a toxic and damaging culture of blame. If you cannot identify the single point of accountability for delivering a project, or if there is ambiguity about responsibilities, it’s likely the result of a culture of blame. Hesitancy to take a risk, admit mistakes, or attempts to cover up mistakes rather than fix them reflects a blame culture. Blame-shifting and directing blame towards a client or customer for the perceived problems the team maybe facing, means it is likely that no one is willing to go the extra mile and under a culture of blame. Hushed voices in the kitchen, whispers in the hallway or gossip in the carpark, these conversations erode the integrity and dynamic of any business and usually relate to an underlying blame culture.

So, all those business owners, leaders, management, before you look to take the easy route and look to blame, make derogatory comments about past members of staff, undermine a current employee, undertake a witch hunt in the business, throw accusatory statements to your colleagues, customers or clients...

Take a very deep breath, suck in some fresh air and be magnanimous, demonstrate humility, exude professionalism, you will be respected for it and ultimately you and the business will benefit from it.

The Toxic Employee or Employer

Tue, 02 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Poisoning the office or the business

I recently read an article on LinkedIn, ‘Ever Wonder if Your Workplace Is Toxic? Actually, It Is if These 7 Things Are Happening Now’ which made me think of the Toxic Employee/Employer and the importance of identifying and removing them from your business before they have caused considerable damage.

All businesses need to work as one cohesive unit, large corporations due to their size sometimes are challenged to do so, for small to medium sized business it is critical. If there is dissent and mistrust in the workforce, then it is very likely your business is suffering. Businesses need to identify toxic employees and route them out before they do irreparable damage. Employees need to recognise toxic employers, if they want a harmonious working environment, respect and recognition for their efforts.

The worst type of toxic employee are the ones that create that negative impact on your workplace. These individuals are the fatal contributor for a business and for ensuring a productive team and high morale.

They are the ‘know it all’s’, ‘been there, done that’, ‘If it was me, I would have…’ type of people
The people who could have done something better, but actually never put their hand up to do it…
They love to highlight failures of others
The first to point fingers and blame
They constantly gossip
They are two faced, agreeing to your face and disagreeing to their peers
They will not go outside the boundaries of their job role
They are the ones who have done all this before and were better at it
They pick the holes in anything that is suggested by others, but will not add any constructive input
They will happily sacrifice others to distract from their own weaknesses or failings
They have no loyalty or respect for others

Sadly, these people are not uncommon in the workplace, they are like a malignant virus, a mood hoover, they are a drain on the business, teams and individuals. These types of toxic employees contribute nothing positive to the workplace, and have the potential and ability to ruin your business.

These people continually and negatively affect productivity, motivation, performance and morale. Toxic employees are a contagion – effecting the entire office or business.

Sadly, they seem to flourish when you have a toxic employer, which only extrapolates the misery, decay, unrest and sense of dread and hopelessness.

If you want your company to succeed, these individuals (be they employers or employees) and their behaviours will have to be dealt with…

The worst types of toxic employers are the employers who rule and not lead… they are the archetypal bully and rule with the underlying aspect of fear… fear you will be blamed, fear you will be sacked, fear you will be belittled, fear your colleagues are waiting to fill your shoes… They instigate ‘Divide and Conquer’ strategies to keep employees constantly questioning who is supporting them or covering their back. They are quick to blame others who cannot defend themselves, such as ex-employees, overseas employees, absent employees, employees out of the office, they will spread rumour and incorrect assumptions, seed insecurities to defend their own position and ensure that their subordinates are compliant and subservient.

Working in such an environment is demoralising and unproductive, employees in this insidious situation have to take the proactive action for change… and that is look for a new job.

Employers who think such practices are legitimate, only have a short period of time before the signs of collapse and decay start to show. Employees will start to leave, customers will walk, suppliers will shy away.

Article inspired by:
Ever Wonder if Your Workplace Is Toxic? Actually, It Is if These 7 Things Are Happening Now

Your LinkedIn marketing strategy...

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 11:20:44 GMT

Preparing and executing your company social media presence throughout 2019

Have you noticed a few changes on LinkedIn lately?

The interface changed this year and some new features were added. Like every digital platform, changes are often, social media platforms move quickly, and you need to keep up with them. This can be a challenge, especially if you don’t have a dedicated expert on board.

Here are a few valuable pointers to push you in the right direction…

· Are you utilising Showcase pages? They can highlight your company key areas, products or services.

· Search engines will pick out the first 156 words from your company page, so make sure your keywords are in text and your company page is up to date.

· Post often with relevant content to your audience

· Video is imperative - according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words

· All your employees, customer facing and especially executives should be on LinkedIn and sharing company posts.

Did you know…

· There are 546 million LinkedIn users worldwide in 200 countries

· 61 million users are senior level influencers and 40 million are decision making positions

· LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform amongst Fortune 500 companies

Can you afford not to be getting the best out of it?

There are many more ways to boost awareness and traction to your brand through LinkedIn. If you are looking to improve your presence and increase brand awareness and visibility through LinkedIn, then get in touch...